Apple won’t release any more new Macs before the end of the year. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company had planned to announce new M2 versions of its 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros “as early as this fall,” but Apple now aims to introduce them in the first quarter of 2023. Gurman adds that the launch will likely coincide with the release of macOS Ventura 13.3.
“Apple has rarely launched new products in January or February during recent years, so I’d expect the new Macs to be announced by the first half of March,” he writes. “That aligns with the planned ship dates for the corresponding software, but also makes sense in light of Apple’s recent history of launching new Macs during that month, including the Mac Studio this year.”
Gurman points to Apple’s recent earnings call for supporting evidence. Earlier this week, Tim Cook told analysts the company’s product line for the holiday season was “set.” Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri provided even stronger confirmation, noting he expected Mac revenue to “decline substantially” in December in part because there are no new MacBook Pros to boost sales.
When they finally do arrive, the new MacBook Pros will feature the same design as the current 2021 models. The primary change Apple has planned is the inclusion of its new M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets. According to Gurman, the M2 Max will feature up to 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores.
While Apple users shouldn’t expect any more hardware from the company before the end of the year, the company is still working on new software. Gurman says iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 should arrive by mid-December. The company is currently testing those updates among developers.
“What is your biggest pain point?”, North Carolina State University PhD student Samim Mirhosseini and Microsoft Researchers Austin Z. Henley & Chris Parnin asked 32 computer science instructors at universities and community colleges. Their feedback is summed up in a just-posted paper that will be presented at SIGCSE 2023.
Instructors cited understanding what students are struggling with, answering students’ questions, limited teaching assistant (TA) support, grading & feedback, course material preparation, and administrative tasks as challenges, pain points, and things they wish they could change. Interestingly, instructors indicated that some of the attempts to address pain points — including the increased use of TA’s, interactive textbooks/exercises, automated grading, “flipped” classrooms [where lectures are assigned as video homework, with classtime reserved for interaction], and peer instruction — aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.
– “Some TAs are not mature programmers,” instructors noted. “TAs sometimes only run the unit tests and never read the code, [so] two submissions that were nearly identical, but one got [high] marks and the other got [low] marks.”
– Automation brings its own challenges, instructors added, citing the problem of interactive textbooks that give grades but deduct points even if there is only a whitespace difference with the solution (“My students struggle so much with it and they spend hours trying to get the white space correct in their program when in reality that’s not what I want them spending time on”).
– Instructors also cited struggles with “how to design ‘Copilot-proof’ assignments, to prevent students from completing homework assignments in seconds with little conceptual knowledge.
– Regarding the flipped classroom, one instructor confessed, “I’ve checked and there’s very few people watching these videos.”
While grading was cited as “probably the biggest burden of the courses” and “an impossible task,” one instructor still noted a preference to grade things themselves even if they have TAs “because [of] the feedback I can get from […] their homework and assignments.” Along the same lines, another noted that while they also wish for more automation of mundane tasks, they are strongly opposed to automating feedback to students because “I think this is the wrong direction for education. Striping away community and humanity from learning.”
“Faced with a squeeze on profits and dwindling share prices, internet service providers are seeking ways of making additional income,” reports CNBC.
One example? “Telecom groups are pushing European regulators to consider implementing a framework where the companies that send traffic along their networks are charged a fee to help fund mammoth upgrades to their infrastructure, something known as the ‘sender pays’ principle.”
Their logic is that certain platforms, like Amazon Prime and Netflix, chew through gargantuan amounts of data and should therefore foot part of the bill for adding new capacity to cope with the increased strain. “The simple argument is that telcos want to be duly compensated for providing this access and growth in traffic,” media and telecoms analyst Paolo Pescatore, from PP Foresight, told CNBC.
The idea is garnering political support, with France, Italy and Spain among the countries coming out in favor. The European Commission is preparing a consultation examining the issue, which is expected to launch early next year…. Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix accounted for more than 56% of all global data traffic in 2021, according to a May report that was commissioned by European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association. An annual contribution to network costs of 20 billion euros ($19.50 billion) from tech giants could boost EU economic output by 72 billion euros, the report added…. U.S. tech giants should “make a fair contribution to the sizable costs they currently impose on European networks,” the bosses of 16 telecom operators said in a joint statement last month….
The debate isn’t limited to Europe, either. In South Korea, companies have similarly lobbied politicians to force “over-the-top” players like YouTube and Netflix to pay for network access…. Meanwhile, tech giants say they’re already investing a ton into internet infrastructure in Europe — 183 billion euros between 2011 to 2021, according to a report from consulting firm Analysys Mason — including submarine cables, content delivery networks and data centers. Netflix offers telcos thousands of cache servers, which store internet content locally to speed up access to data and reduce strain on bandwidth, for free.
Ever since it was first announced in 2020, Chromecast with Google TV has been a solid and affordable purchase for those looking to add more smarts and streaming options to their existing setup. If you’ve been patiently waiting to buy one, now is a good time to do so. Amazon has discounted the 4K version. After a 20 percent discount, the device is $40, matching its previous all-time low price. The retailer has also cut the cost of the recently announced HD variant. At the moment, you can buy the device for $20. That’s $10 less than its usual $30 asking price.
As mentioned above, both versions of Chromecast with Google TV are excellent options if you’re on a budget or prefer Google’s approach over competitors like Apple, Amazon or Roku. Engadget awarded the 4K version a score of 86 in 2020, praising the device for its excellent Google Assistant integration, comfortable and easy-to-use remote, as well as Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. The more affordable HD version is similarly excellent, offering much the same experience at a lower price point for those who don’t own a 4K TV. If there was a reason to buy a competing streaming stick over the Chromecast with Google TV, it was because the dongle could sometimes be slow. That has since changed, with Google releasing a performance update this past summer.
In computing, a good firewall system can prevent any unauthorized access to the network security systems. Here are 15 basic firewall-cmd commands you can utilize in Linux operating systems to protect your network.
Even when bathrooms are renovated, the mirror is often overlooked. Outdated tiles and fixtures may be replaced, but the plain-yet-functional builder-grade mirror frequently remains. Here are a few ways to upgrade your boring mirror without spending a lot of time or money on the project.
Security certification body (ISC)Â — the International Information System Security Certification Consortium — “is a non-profit organization providing training and certification for cybersecurity professionals,” writes PortSwigger “Daily Swig” blog for cybersecurity news. “Over the last two years, it has been carrying out a review of its practices around committees, nominations, and governance.”
But some of the proposed bylaw amendments (announced earlier this month) drew criticism:
According to Wim Remes, a former board member who spent three years as (ISC)Â chair, the organization currently has a poor record on member engagement, with election turnout averaging only around 4%. As things stand, 500 endorsements are required for members to raise a petition. However, the new proposals would see this figure raised to 1% of the 170,000-odd members. “This effectively shuts down an important relief valve in corporate governance, in my opinion, and is not in the interest of the membership,” Remes told The Daily Swig. “It’s already impossible to get up to 500. It’s unthinkable anybody would make it to 1,600, [or] to 2,000.”
Also in the pipeline is a significant change to the process for electing the board of directors. If approved, this would remove the option for a write-in candidate and witness the board submitting a slate of qualified candidates to the membership that would be equal to the number of open seats. “Combined with making the petition process harder — if not impossible — this is as close to a coup by governance as one could get,” Remes argued. “They still call it an election, but it is officially a coronation.”
Meanwhile, the Ethics Committee is to be eliminated as a standing committee of the board.
Clar Rosso, CEO of (ISC)2, tells the site that the bylaw changes will be voted on by members, and will move the ethics process “from one that is majority board-run to a process that is adjudicated by a broader cross-section of members.”
“Additionally, many of these bylaw changes are reflective of best practices of other similarly-sized associations, and some simply provide clarity and ensure legal compliance with applicable state and federal laws. The (ISC)Â board of directors, comprised entirely of member volunteers, supports the proposed changes.”
Long-time Slashdot reader mencik shares a page offering nine alternate proposals to increase transparency — along with a petition for including them on the agenda of the group’s next annual meeting. (Reminder: only ISC2 members can vote.)
Women have faced gender-based discrimination in the workforce throughout history, denied employment in all but a handful of subservient roles, regularly ignored for promotions and pay raises — and rarely ever compensated at the same rates as their male peers. This long and storied socioeconomic tradition of financially screwing over half the population continues largely unabated into the 21st century where women still make 84 cents on the dollar that men do. In her new book, The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future, Professor of Law and founding member of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Markets at the University of San Diego, Dr. Orly Lobel, explores how digital technologies, often maligned for their roles in exacerbating societal ills, can be harnessed to undo the damage they’ve caused.
For years, the double standard was glaring: employers demanded secrecy about salaries while asking prospective employees for their salary histories. Now, we can tackle both ends of this asymmetry. Just as digitization is helping to reverse information flows to foster more transparency in the market about employees’ worth, new laws are also directing employers to not rely as much on past pay levels, which can be tainted by systemic inequality. In 2016, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a law prohibiting employers from asking job candidates about their salary histories. Since then, more than a dozen states have followed suit.
Barring employers from asking prospective job candidates about their salary histories has two goals. The first is breaking the vicious pay gap cycle, which emerges when women are paid less at a previous job and that gap is then replicated by the next employer. The second is addressing gender differences in the negotiation process Salary figures are plagued by gender disparity, and they can perpetuate and further exacerbate existing market disparities. When a woman discloses that she currently earns less than a man, she could be harming her salary trajectory — both in the applied-for position and for the rest of her career. Each time she discloses her current salary to a potential employer, that gap is likely to grow, as recruitment efforts and promotions are often offered as a percentage increase in relation to current base salary. Rather than relying on biased figures, bans on salary history inquiry induce employers to use other ways to determine a potential employee’s worth, including a shift to automated computation. Employers using market and internal data can consider merit-related characteristics when determining pay, such as experience, training, education, skill, and past performance.
And yet, as we have seen, human bias can creep into our algorithms, and an algorithm that is fed data tainted by salary bias is likely to perpetuate that bias itself. Feedback loops are digital vicious cycles that can result in self-fulfilling outcomes. Once again: bias in, bias out. The risk is that an algorithm will learn that certain types or categories of employees are on average underpaid, and then calculate that into salary offers. This is the wrong that recent policy has been designed to eliminate — and that we can program AI to avoid. Removing the anchored numerical figure encourages employers to proactively assess pay based on the company’s needs and the candidate’s fit rather than on a tainted number. At the same time, having pay scale information for a job but not having a salary history on the table can embolden women to ask for more.
What’s more, AI can also help in the future — maybe not even the distant future — by replacing some of the negotiation that takes place in unequal settings. Empirical studies on negotiation differences between men and women have repeatedly shown that women on average negotiate less, and that when they do, employers react negatively. Women don’t ask for higher salaries, better terms, promotions, or opportunities nearly as frequently as men do. In my research, I’ve called this the negotiation deficit. In one study at Carnegie Mellon University, 93 percent of female MBA students accepted an initial salary offer, while only 43 percent of men did. In another study, female participants simulating salary negotiations asked for an average of $7,000 less than male participants. Economists Andreas Leibbrandt and John List have also found that while women are much less likely to negotiate with employers over salary, this difference disappears when all job seekers are explicitly told that pay is negotiable, mitigating the pay gap. My own experimental research with behavioral psychologist and law professor Yuval Feldman, my longtime collaborator, has found that women in some work environments act less as “homo economicus” — that is, as rational economic actors — and more as altruistic social actors, such that women do not demand for themselves as much as men, and are more likely to value non-monetary benefits, such as good corporate culture.
Can these research insights offer us clues for developing new software tools that will spur women to negotiate? Digital platforms can serve employees by providing advice and information on asking for a raise or preparing for an interview. Information on pay—and especially an explicit expectation that pay can and should be negotiated—can empower applicants to negotiate higher salaries before accepting job offers. The digital platform PayScale conducts annual surveys asking thousands of job seekers whether they disclosed their pay at previous jobs during the interview process. PayScale’s 2018 survey found that women who were asked about their salary histories and refused to disclose were offered positions 1.8 percent less often than women who were asked and disclosed. By contrast, men who refused to disclose when asked about salary history received offers 1.2 percent more often than men who did disclose.
Even when women do negotiate, they are treated differently. In my research, I call this phenomenon the negotiation penalty. Women are told to “lean in” and make demands, but the reality is that for centuries, women have been universally viewed as weaker negotiators than their male counterparts. In one series of experiments, participants evaluated written accounts of candidates who did or did not initiate negotiations for higher salaries. The results in each experiment showed that participants penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations, deeming women who asked for more not “nice” or too “demanding.” While qualities such as assertiveness, strength, and competitiveness culturally benefit male negotiators, women who display such characteristics are often considered too aggressive. Another study looked at data from a group of Swedish job seekers and found not only that women ended up with lower salaries than equally qualified male peers, but also that they were often penalized for negotiating like them. Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson have shown that attractive avatars lead to more intimate behavior with a confederate in terms of self-disclosure and interpersonal distance. In a second study, they also observed that tall avatars lead to more confident behavior than short avatars in a negotiation task. They term it the Proteus Effect (the Greek god Proteus was known to have the ability to take on many self-representations). The Proteus Effect suggests that the visual characteristics and traits of an avatar are associated with correlating behavioral stereotypes and expectations, including those that affect the way we negotiate.
The eleventh annual competition for artificial intelligence that has been trained to negotiate — the Hagglebot Olympics, as it’s been termed in the popular media — was held in January 2021. Universities from Turkey and Japan won this time. In some experiments involving negotiations with bots, most people did not even realize they were talking to a bot rather than another person — the bots had learned to hold fluent conversations that completely mimicked humans. Using game theory, researchers are increasingly improving the ways bots can negotiate on behalf of humans, eliminating some of the aspects in which we humans are fallible, like trying to factor in and weigh many different aspects of the deal. AI can now predict the other side’s preferences quite fast. For example, an AI listening by microphone to the first five minutes of negotiation is learning to predict much of the eventual deal just from the negotiators’ voices. Following these speech patterns through machine learning, it turns out that when the voice of a negotiator varies a lot in volume and pitch, they are being a weak player at the negotiation table. When the negotiating sides mirror each other, it means they are closer to reaching an agreement. Using AI also has helped uncover the ways in which women are penalized at the negotiation table. A new study out of the University of Southern California used a chatbot that didn’t know the gender identities of participants to evaluate negotiation skills. The study showed that most of us — both men and women — do quite badly at negotiating salaries. Over 40 percent of participants didn’t negotiate at all, and most people left money on the table they could have received. Women valued stock options less than men did as part of their compensation package, affecting women’s likelihood to accumulate wealth over time. These advances can also help with negotiation disparities across different identities. A group of Israeli and American researchers looked at how a smart computer can negotiate with humans from different cultural backgrounds. Without telling the machine anything about the characteristics of people from three countries — Israel, Lebanon, and the United States — they let the AI learn about the patterns of cultural negotiation differences by engaging in negotiation games. They found that the computer was able to outperform people in all countries. These developments are promising. We can envision bots learning about negotiation differences and ultimately countering such differences to create more equitable exchanges, level the playing field, and achieve fair outcomes. They can be designed to tackle the specific distributive goals we have.
Here’s an acclaimed director who doesn’t shun the Marvel Cinematic Universe. During an interview with Rolling Stone while being profiled for the opening of his Almost Famous musical, filmmaker Cameron Crowe talked about his interest in taking on an MCU film, if there was a right fit for him.Thankfully, he was…
Even before the pandemic made everything worse, air travel was already harder than it needed to be. One of the most frustrating parts is that as a passenger, you could do everything right—following all the rules, getting there with ample of time before your flight, always having your ticket and ID ready to go—and…
Fierce Electronics reports on “a complex legal battle in U.S. district court” between Qualcomm and Arm “over licensing of intellectual property with potentially far-reaching impact…”
Normally, Arm licenses its architectural designs and related IP to chipmakers such as Nvidia or Qualcomm, which in turn produce chips that are then sold to OEMs that use those chips to make servers and other computers and devices. In an updated Qualcomm counterclaim made public Oct. 26, Qualcomm argues that Arm is no longer going to license its CPU designs after 2024 to Qualcomm and other chip companies under technology license agreements. Instead, Qualcomm asserts, Arm will only license to a broad array of device makers….
Arm has not yet formally responded to Qualcomm’s latest counterclaim but told Fierce Electronics via email on Friday that Qualcomm’s complaint is “riddled with inaccuracies” that Arm will address in a formal legal response in coming weeks….
[Analyst] Dylan Patel in SemiAnalysis also said the counterclaim shows Arm is not planning to allow external GPUs, NPUs or ISPs in Arm-based SoCs. “It seems that Arm is effectively bundling its other IP with the CPU IP in a take-it-or-leave-it model,” Patel said. “That would mean Samsung’s licensing deal with AMD for GPU or Mediatek with Imagination GPU is not longer allowed after 2024….” Qualcomm argues Arm is making it clear to the marketplace that “it will act recklessly and opportunistically, threatening the development of new and innovative products as a negotiating tactic, not because it has valid license and trademark claims.”
Again, Arm has called Qualcomm’s complaint “riddled with inaccuracies.” Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, tells Fierce Wireless that If Qualcomm’s counterclaim is accurate, “this is a troubling step for the industry.”
If Arm were to get rid of tech licensing as described by Qualcomm, it would give rise to RISC-V use, something Arm “should be worried about,” Gold said….
[Analyst] Patel has also questioned if Arm’s original lawsuit is more than just about money and might be because Softbank (owner of Arm) and Arm remain angry that Qualcomm, as Patel puts it, worked with regulators to block Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm. After working for more than a year to seal the deal, Nvidia and SoftBank announced the termination of the proposed deal on Feb. 7, 2022, due to “significant regulatory challenges.” Arm was expected to go public within a year, but an IPO has not occurred as of late October.
While Intel contributed oneVPL support to FFmpeg this summer that can be used for video encoding/decoding to AV1 and other formats, this past week Intel engineers contributed an AV1 encode Quick Sync Video (QSV) encoder too for FFmpeg. This AV1 encode path using their Media SDK with QSV is ultimately building atop oneVPL…
The Arctic—that remote, largely undisturbed, 5.5 million square miles of frozen terrain—is heating up fast. In fact, it’s warming nearly four times quicker than the rest of the world, with disastrous consequences for the region and its inhabitants. Many of these impacts you probably know from nature documentaries: ice caps melting, sea levels rising, and polar bears losing their homes. But good news! There is another knock-on effect to worry about: the warming landscape is rewiring viral dynamics, with the potential to unleash new pathogens.
An underappreciated consequence of climate change is how it will exacerbate the spread of infectious disease. As the world heats up, many species are expected to up sticks and meander many miles away from their typical habitat, bringing various pathogens along with them for the ride. This means that previously unacquainted viruses and hosts will meet for the first time, potentially leading to viral spillover—where a virus jumps from one reservoir host to a new one, like our old friend SARS-CoV-2.
Sigstore that is backed by Google, Red Hat, GitHub, and other prominent organizations with an aim to secure the open-source software supply chain has reached general availability and issued the “v1.0” releases for their key software components…
For those interested in the OneXPlayer handheld gaming consoles, a x86 platform driver for the Linux kernel has been posted for getting working sensor support on the AMD-powered OneXPlayer Mini…
Back in Linux 5.19 the initial code for Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) was merged while still an ongoing matter is getting the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) integration merged that is now up to its tenth revision and spans 108 patches…
Today ProPublica published “the largest-ever analysis of Google’s ad practices on non-English-language websites,” saying their report shows Google “is funneling revenue to some of the web’s most prolific purveyors of false information in Europe, Latin America and Africa,” and “reveals how the tech giant makes disinformation profitable….”
The company has publicly committed to fighting disinformation around the world, but a ProPublica analysis, the first ever conducted at this scale, documented how Google’s sprawling automated digital ad operation placed ads from major brands on global websites that spread false claims on such topics as vaccines, COVID-19, climate change and elections…. The resulting ad revenue is potentially worth millions of dollars to the people and groups running these and other unreliable sites — while also making money for Google.
Platforms such as Facebook have faced stark criticism for failures to crack down on disinformation spread by people and governments on their platforms around the world. But Google hasn’t faced the same scrutiny for how its roughly $200 billion in annual ad sales provides essential funding for non-English-language websites that misinform and harm the public. Google’s publicly announced policies bar the placement of ads on content that makes unreliable or harmful claims on a range of issues, including health, climate, elections and democracy. Yet the investigation found Google regularly places ads, including those from major brands, on articles that appear to violate its own policy.
ProPublica’s examination showed that ads from Google are more likely to appear on misleading articles and websites that are in languages other than English, and that Google profits from advertising that appears next to false stories on subjects not explicitly addressed in its policy, including crime, politics, and such conspiracy theories as chemtrails. A former Google leader who worked on trust and safety issues acknowledged that the company focuses heavily on English-language enforcement and is weaker across other languages and smaller markets….
The former Google leader suggests Google focuses on English-language problems partly because they’re sensitive to bad PR and the posibility of regulatory scrutiny (and because English-language markets have the biggest impact).
Google is spending more money to patrol non-English content, a spokesperson told ProPublica, touting the company’s “extensive measures to tackle misinformation… In 2021, we removed ads from more than 1.7 billion publisher pages and 63,000 sites globally. We know that our work is not done, and we will continue to invest in our enforcement systems to better detect unreliable claims and protect users around the world.”
But in some cases Google’s ads appeared on false online article published years ago, the article points out, “suggesting that the company’s failure to block ads on content that appears to violate its rules is a long-standing and ongoing problem… [T]he investigation shows that as one arm of Google helps support fact-checkers, its core ad business provides critical revenue that ensures the publication of falsehoods remains profitable.”
Noting that Elon Musk once called Dogecoin “the people’s crypto,” Reuters reports that on Saturday the price of Dogecoin surged more than 70%, “extending this week’s gains after Elon Musk sealed a $44-billion deal to take over Twitter…”
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance which has invested $500 million into Musk’s buyout of Twitter, said it is brainstorming strategies on how blockchain and crypto could be helpful to Twitter….
Musk tweeted this month that he is buying Twitter to create an “everything app”. The idea of an everything app originated in Asia with companies like WeChat, which lets users not only send messages but also make payments, shop online or hail a taxi.
“Kathleen Booth, who has died aged 100, co-designed of one of the world’s first operational computers and wrote two of the earliest books on computer design and programming,” the Telegraph wrote this week.
“She was also credited with the invention of the first assembly language, a programming language designed to be readable by users.”
In 1946 she joined a team of mathematicians under Andrew Booth at Birkbeck College undertaking calculations for the scientists working on the X-ray crystallography images which contributed to the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA….
To help the number-crunching involved Booth had embarked on building a computing machine called the Automatic Relay Calculator or ARC, and in 1947 Kathleen accompanied him on a six-month visit to Princeton University, where they consulted John von Neumann, who had developed the idea of storing programs in a computer. On their return to England they co-wrote General Considerations in the Design of an All Purpose Electronic Digital Computer, and went on to make modifications to the original ARC to incorporate the lessons learnt.
Kathleen devised the ARC assembly language for the computer and designed the assembler.
In 1950 Kathleen took a PhD in applied mathematics and the same year she and Andrew Booth were married. In 1953 they cowrote Automatic Digital Calculators, which included the general principles involved in the new “Planning and Coding”programming style.
The Booths remained at Birkbeck until 1962 working on other computer designs including the All Purpose Electronic (X) Computer (Apexc, the forerunner of the ICT 1200 computer which became a bestseller in the 1960s), for which Kathleen published the seminal Programming for an Automatic Digital Calculator in 1958. The previous year she and her husband had co-founded the School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Birkbeck.
“The APE(X)C design was commercialized and sold as the HEC by the British Tabulating Machine Co Ltd, which eventually became ICL,” remembers the Register, sharing a 2010 video about the machine (along with several links for “Further Reading.”)
